In November of 2013, I had the privilege of attending a one-day retirement conference, organized around the theme “The Difference Christ Makes,” to celebrate and honor the life and work of Stanley Hauerwas. It was a full day—Eucharistic celebration in the morning followed by papers and responses throughout the day with a concluding and celebratory dinner in the evening. Stanley has a lot of friends, and it was a testimony to those friendships and to his influence just how many made the journey to Durham for the event.

I’m happy to report that the conference papers have now been published. Anyone who has learned from Stanley over the years will want to check these essays out, but others familiar with Stanley’s work, yet perhaps less enthusiastic about it, should get a hold of a copy as well. All of the contributions are excellent, but the highlight of the volume for me is Jonathan Tran’s essay on the challenge of remembering the late Anne Hauerwas, as well as Peter Dula’s response to Tran’s paper. It’s an exchange that demonstrates how interesting Stanley’s work is just to the extent that it has attracted such interesting students. On a day that could have been filled entirely with generous encomiums and hilarious Hauerwas memories (and there were plenty of both), Tran and Dula took a riskier path—interrogating the limits of any theological ethic in light of Stanley’s failed first marriage and how it was narrated in his memoir, Hannah’s Child—in a way that honored Stanley all the more deeply by doing real work in the field that Stanley was formally retiring from.

I hope you’ll check it out!

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